If you’re one of our clients, we know how disappointing it is to have your much-anticipated travel plans disrupted by COVID-19. As passionate travel specialists, we’re counting down the days until we can help you plan new and exciting adventures, but for now – our priority is to process your cancelled bookings and ensure you have all the relevant information to obtain the best possible outcome.
Here’s a summary of the most common scenario’s we’re working through and what to consider as we troubleshoot your travel booking. This information is current at time of writing and is subject to change given the circumstances:
If You Decide To Cancel Prior To an Airline/Supplier Cancels Your Booking…
Bookings will be subject to full cancellation penalties.
Depending on your departure date, cancellation fees of 100% will apply if your travel has been paid for in full and is within a certain period of time. This varies depending on each individual supplier.
If you are travelling from May 2020 onwards, and your booking is yet to be cancelled, it is your decision if you wish to cancel and you will be subject to standard cancellation policies. The alternative is to sit tight and wait and see if your airline and suppliers, cancel your bookings. This will give you more options depending on what they are offering – a credit for future travel and/or a cash refund.
Currently Qantas are allowing anyone who has a booking up to 31 July 2020, to put that booking into credit to use by 31st December 2021. Bookings must be put into credit by 30 April 2020. We are in the process of contacting anyone who have bookings during this date range to arrange cancellations and are prioritising them in chronological order.
American Airlines (at this stage) are only working on April flights, which means you will need to wait until your flights are cancelled by them to be eligible to apply for either a credit or cash refund.
Many hotels are only allowing cancellations up to the end of April so again, you will need to wait a bit longer for your options.
Every airline has a different policy, but most are offering credits as opposed to cash refunds.
If Your Booking is Cancelled By The Airline/Supplier…
Bookings will be subject to each individual airline, hotel, tour company, car, train or transfer supplier’s refund policies.
This is a timely process as we try to ascertain what the cash refund amount is, versus taking a credit for future travel, so we can advise you of your best options.
1. Best Case – Cash refund
We are endeavouring to obtain cash refunds wherever possible.
2. Travel Credit
Many airlines and suppliers are only offering future travel credits.
Some are offering reduced cash refunds, versus a full credit and some are even offering extra credit on top of what you originally paid.
We are assessing each of these and checking the rebooking terms so we can present any choices to you and offer our advice on the best way to go.
For example, each airline has different rules for rebooking periods with their credit option. We’re carefully checking this information with each booking as we not only want to comply with their rules, but ensure we secure the credit for you.
As soon as we receive any cash refunds related to your booking, we will pay this into your bank account within 2 days. With most suppliers taking up to 12 weeks to repay refunds, we want you to obtain your money back as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for this turn around.
Thank you for your understanding and patience as we navigate this unprecedented time as a travel business. Having lost the opportunity to create any future income given Government travel ban restrictions, please be mindful that we are having to cancel travel bookings that we had already worked on over the past 12 months. In order to retain some of our costs as a business and team, we are unable to refund our retrospective income so if you’d like more information on how this works, please refer to our previous blog post here which goes into more detail.
We’re here to support you now and into the future with your travel plans and we hope this cements the benefits of having a travel professional in your corner to help navigate the process.